Chamber and committees

We are still working towards meeting that commitment. Free breakfasts are actually available in a number of schools across the country because headteachers are choosing to use pupil equity fund money, which is additionality that the Government provides, to invest in free breakfasts. Hundreds of schools across Scotland are already offering free breakfasts. I have asked officials to give me granular evidence and to audit what is currently happening. There is a mixed approach to breakfast provision.

I should also say that some local authorities make political choices to invest in funding breakfast provision. That is a choice for local authorities to make. You might argue that I should provide that additionality to the system. There is sometimes a tension regarding local authorities’ responsibilities. We are working towards delivering the commitment, but I recognise that a lot of schools are already delivering free breakfasts, so I need to have the national picture of what that looks like.

I understand that it was my Government’s commitment. I asked the member where I should find that additionality from in my budget. I also say to the member that I do not yet know what the national picture is in relation to provision of free breakfasts, because some local authorities are taking a decision to deliver them anyway.

I also say to the member that some local authorities took a decision to wipe out school meals debt. Others have not done that, so the Government has provided an additional £1.5 million in this budget to some local authorities that have not been able to wipe out school meals debt, in order to encourage that good behaviour.

In relation to free school breakfasts, funding is provided, for example through PEF, to allow local authorities to take political decisions, at the local level, to provide that additionality. Some have done so. I praise those local authorities for promoting and supporting the nutrition of young people in our schools. Other authorities have taken decisions to invest that funding elsewhere. I want to know what the national picture is. That is why I have asked for an audit of breakfast provision.

On Gaelic, the Scottish Languages Bill will be considered later this year, and we will continue to work with Bòrd na Gàidhlig and others on their obligations relating to a national Gaelic plan. The bill will give Gaelic and the Scots language official status, and it will change some of the ways in which we support Gaelic and Scots in schools, including through changes to education. We will support the plan’s development.

It is worth saying that support for Gaelic has increased from more than £15 million back in 2005-06 to about £25 million in the current budget allocation. Our Gaelic funding is split between money for education approaches and money for what I suppose we would classify as the cultural side of things. For example, MG Alba sits in my budget line, and we support Gaelic broadcasting through it.

Before I answer that question specifically, I will give a very factual answer. My wife sits as a member of the Promise oversight board, so I have an interest. Given that, I will give Mr Rennie my factual response, then I will pass the question on to Andrew Watson to answer the substantive question.

We have allocated £50 million from the whole family wellbeing programme for 2024-25. That is significant investment in relation to how we go about keeping the Promise, and it is working to support local areas to transform some of their services. The Deputy First Minister has lead responsibility for the whole family wellbeing fund.

I defer to Andrew Watson on the policy, having noted my interest.

On diversity, we have our first female chair of the SQA. That is good—it represents progress in the qualifications body. More broadly, we maybe need to give a bit more thought to diversity, because, if you are talking about the advice that I receive as cabinet secretary, that comes primarily from civil servants in the Scottish Government and, to a large extent, advice on learning and reform comes from Education Scotland.

When I was a staff member there, many years ago, the Education Scotland staffing complement depended on secondments. In my experience, that was helpful because it meant staff coming out of the classroom, having a refresh and engaging with pedagogy and changes to the curriculum, then going back into the system. The organisation pivoted away from that model of secondments under the previous chief executive, so it is now quite static. We need to think again about how we refresh some of the thinking that I hear as cabinet secretary to ensure that it is fresh, that it comes from the classroom and that it can deliver tangible improvements.

I can only do so much going out and engaging directly with teachers, but I do it pretty much every week. To go back to Ms Thomson’s point about diversity, if you go into a school, you will see that teachers have the solutions. They know what is working—to go back to Mr Rennie’s point—and they know what is not working, and they know how they could fix it.

When you sit down with a group of teachers, they are always quite pragmatic in coming up with solutions. Therefore, in response to Ms Thomson’s specific point about diversity, there is something to be considered about how we capture that in responding to Professor Hayward’s review as well as the other reviews on my desk.

It feels as though there is a bit of a disconnect—it certainly felt that way when I was appointed cabinet secretary—between where we have got to on policy reform and all the different people who fed in to those reports, if we are talking about consensus and the reality of being a classroom teacher.

Yes.

My rebuttal to Mr Rennie relates to how we quantify the poverty-related attainment gap and the role of schools. We have a huge programme and a commitment to investing significant amounts of public money in closing the gap, but schools can do only so much. On average, our children spend about 20 per cent of their time in school and 80 per cent at home. In that mix, we may need to remember the limitations on schools when it comes to some of the work on closing the gap.

On Mr Rennie’s second point, it is in improving performance that I think we can make a real difference in how we invest in our teachers. We did that last year through the pay deal. We need to do more work on that, as we heard earlier, and I am sure that Ms Duncan-Glancy will talk about that, too, in relation to class contact time. We really need to invest in the profession, recognising their role in driving improvement. Teachers will be key to ensuring that we get to where we need to be in relation to improvement.

Mr Rennie talks about a tension between substantial reform, the various bodies and all the reports that I have on my desk. We will come to the chamber in a few weeks’ time for a wider debate on qualifications, and I am keen to hear views from members on that. I am really struck, however, by the amount of pressure that the education system is under, particularly our secondary schools.

The committee will reflect on the fact that it is only this year, following the pandemic, that the SQA has reintroduced some of the qualification requirements that existed before Covid. Some of our young people have never had to sit any internal assessments or do the assignments that might sit alongside them, and they are suddenly being asked to do all those extra things. Many teachers might not have previously delivered some of that course content, because the SQA stripped it out. Therefore, I need to measure and balance carefully the changes that are coming in the future with the current reality, which, as we will hear in the chamber this afternoon, is challenging.

I do not know the answer to that—I will defer to Mr Anson on the subject—but I think that that would be our expectation.

I am very happy to do so. Ms Duncan-Glancy mentioned a pupil teacher ratio of 13.7. Scotland has the lowest pupil teacher ratio in the whole of the UK, which is welcome. That means that we have the most teachers per pupil in the whole of the UK.

I think that Ms Duncan-Glancy is asking about the £145.5 million of additionality that we baked into the local government settlement that was meant to be for additional teachers in the system. It is fair to say that some local authorities have used that for protecting teacher numbers. Again, I praise those local authorities, especially the heads of education and council leaders who have said that they will use that ring fencing to protect the number of teachers in schools, because we know that teachers make a difference—that is how we improve outcomes for our young people. We cannot close the poverty-related attainment gap with fewer teachers in our schools.

However, some local authorities have taken other decisions, for a number of reasons. I think that Ms Duncan-Glancy mentioned a figure of 15. In some of those cases, teacher numbers have gone down by one or two, so we should probably not consider them in the round. From memory, I think that there has been a significant fall in teacher numbers in four or five authorities. I have asked all those authorities for an explanation as to why that might be the case. I have not yet made a decision on that challenge, but I retain the right to recoup some of the funding.

It is worth saying that, as far as I remember—Sam Anson will correct me if I am wrong—we administer the £145 million in such a way that we hold some of it back so that, if a local authority does not meet the requirement to ring fence that funding for teacher numbers, we will not pay it out. I retain the power to do that and to hold on to that additional funding.

Under curriculum for excellence, we do not have a prescriptive curriculum. We might come on to talk about some of the challenge in relation to what that means for particular subjects. However, there is flexibility in the broad general education because, essentially, the theory of CFE allows teachers and local decision makers—headteachers—to decide on the curriculum content for their local context.

You asked about specific guidance. Education Scotland has a role to play in providing such guidance. Sometimes, the challenge for Government is not that we need more guidance but that we need more prescription. Towards the end of last year, I was listening to some of the critique around PISA. Some people advocate bringing much more prescription back to the curriculum in Scotland and some say that there has been too much flexibility.

We need to balance that very carefully. That is why I have committed to the curriculum improvement cycle, starting with maths education. The fact that we are starting with maths is predicated on the PISA results, but it also relates to consideration of some of last year’s national 5 maths examination results. We need to improve the delivery of the maths curriculum. We will then move on to look at English and literacy more broadly.

Education Scotland can provide explicit guidance, but my question to the committee—and this is an issue for us to consider in the wider debate about qualifications reform—is whether that is what the system is looking for. Is the system looking for explicit guidance or is it looking for prescription? The way in which we deliver CFE is such that we do not prescribe curriculum content, but some people advocate that we should have a level of prescription.

There is a tension between the founding principles of curriculum for excellence and how it operates as a curriculum, but perhaps we need to consider those issues in the context of the broader mix of qualifications reform. I am keen to hear views on that, because some people in the system say that we have gone too far in relation to flexibility, and that what teachers are looking for is a bit more prescription and direction to help them to set out the learning outcomes for their young people.